Open Links In The Background Using Mobile Safari [iOS Tips]

Here’s another one of those “so simple it hurts” tips that we find from time to time, leaving us scratching our heads, wondering why we didn’t figure it out sooner.

When you’re browsing the web, whether you’re on a computer or your iPhone, you don’t always want to open links in the window you’re browsing in. Neither do you always want to open them in a new tab in the foreground. Sometimes, especially when you’re doing internet research, you want to open tabs in the background. On the Mac, it’s simply a matter of Command clicking a link in your current browser, or setting a preference or two for your favorite web apps.

You can do this on iOS, too, with a simple tap in Settings. Here’s how.

Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down to the app section and tap on Safari, and then tap on the Open Links area. Tap on In Background, then close out of Settings.

Now, when you’re in Safari, you can tap and hold on a link on any web page, and an “Open in Background” button will be available in the resulting dialog badge. This is a great way to get links ready for reading in a minute or two when you still want to continue your current reading, without losing your place or getting distracted. It mimics the way I work on my Mac browser fairly well; I end up using this a lot.

When you’re ready to read the page you just opened in the background, simply tap the pages indicator in the lower right corner of Safari and navigate to it. Boom, you’re set!

Are you using OS X Mountain Lion? Got a tip you want to share with us? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.

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Although this feature is nice but it’s not really helpful as it is applied to the whole Safari app experience and not per tab. I always use both open in background and in foreground when browsing the web at the same time so going back and forth between Safari and Settings makes this feature unusable.